


Playing God

by zacharybosch



Series: Vampire AU [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Biting, Blood Drinking, Blow Jobs, Cannibalism, Dinner, Haircuts, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Scheming, Superpowers, Vampire Will Graham, background miriam/bev, none of this is above-board, or rather, sorrrryyy, struggling to think of appropriate tags rn so will update when i think of more!, the most pointless superpower ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-11-28 13:15:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18208787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zacharybosch/pseuds/zacharybosch
Summary: Beverly Katz has a hunch and breaks into Hannibal Lecter's house, where she sees proof in his basement that he is the Chesapeake Ripper. Now locked away in the FBI's Witness Protection Unit, she is assured by Jack Crawford that they are working to get Hannibal put behind bars.Jack is conspiring with Miriam Lass to lay a trap from the Ripper to walk in to. That trap is Will Graham, a vampire who has been under the control of the FBI for a century.---A vampire AU! With illustrations! Part 1 is all written and a new chapter will be posted every Saturday!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SO. i have been working on this since august last year. at first i thought i could get it done for hallowe'en where it would be thematically appropriate, what with the vampires and everything. then hallowe'en passed, so i figured maybe christmas vampires would be ok.... then christmas passed. now we're nearly at easter, so...... happy easter i guess? 
> 
> i've fudged the timeline and moved various events around - it's not meant to be a straight retelling of the events of the show, but if anything seems unclear to you, please let me know!!
> 
> huge, endless, stupendous, bottomless thanks to TheSeaVoices for the incredible art she produced for this fic. she captured the images in my head perfectly and i am forever in her debt. please check out her other works, which you can find on [tumblr](https://theseavoices.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/TheSeaVoices), [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/theseavoices/), and [facebook](https://www.facebook.com/TheSeaVoices/)!
> 
> and as always, equally momentous thanks to all of you who helped me when i was angsting over this fic - weconqueratdawn, fragile-teacup, aviran007, and theseavoices (again). this fic was completely new territory for me and you helped me a lot.

Beverly Katz was not much prone to gazing forlornly out of windows and letting her mind churn itself into soup, but right now she could very much see the appeal. Jack was repeating the benefits of the Bureau’s secure witness protection unit for the third time in ten minutes, and all Bev wanted to do was throw herself repeatedly against the bullet-proof glass.

“This entire unit is completely secure, but we’ll keep an agent on the door to your suite twenty-four-seven. Every possible entrance to the unit is covered by CCTV. No blind spots. No-one can so much as sneeze in your direction without us knowing about it.”

“Are you expecting someone to sneeze at me?”

“We’re not expecting anything out of the ordinary. But I want to know that you’re safe.”

“Right now I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again. But I appreciate the trouble you’re going to,” Bev said, fully cognizant of the fact that it had less to do with her personal safety, and everything to do with Jack giving himself a sense of control over the situation.

“We’re working on procuring evidence. _Hard_ evidence. Something that will stand up in court.”

Bev pushed away from the window and turned to face Jack. He was stood in the middle of the room steadfast and resolute, silhouetted by the weak afternoon light streaming in from the opposite window. “You don’t need to chastise me again. I know it was stupid. I just couldn’t let it lie, Jack, do you understand? Chilton is a lot of things, but he is not smart enough to be the Chesapeake Ripper. The whole thing stank from the beginning, but apparently I was the only one who could smell it.”

“If you had just come to me--”

“I _did_ , but you were too wrapped up in Chilton!” Bev shouted, and then stopped herself. Few people could get away with shouting at Jack Crawford once; no-one could get away with shouting at him twice. “You know me, Jack. What did you expect me to do? I had to be sure.”

“Your sense of surety came at a price.”

“It’s a price I’m happy to pay if it means we can cage Hannibal Lecter for good. What I saw in that basement will stay with me for the rest of my life. Please make it worth it.”

“We’ll get him, Beverly, I promise you that. Things are in motion as we speak.”

***

“I’m a vampire.”

Hannibal blinked once, slowly. Then he blinked again. “A vampire.”

“Yes,” Will said. “Whatever shitty little note you’re about to make in my file, don’t make it. This will be a lot easier for both of us if you take me at my word.”

“I see,” Hannibal said. And then, after a too-long pause, “Does Jack know?”

“He does. I have a handler at the bureau who acts as my liaison. Knowledge of my condition is on a strictly need-to-know basis, and so long as I’m working for Jack, he needs to know.”

Hannibal’s eyes glittered in the late afternoon light. “And when he no longer needs to know?”

“I can’t wipe his memory in my current state, but I can scramble it enough that he forgets what I am.”

“And what state is that?”

“I’m on a strict feeding program. ‘Subsistence appointments,’ they call them. I’m given enough to keep me alive, but not so much as to let me thrive. I have… things I can do that go beyond the normal scope of human capability. The feeding program is there to keep those abilities in check.”

“Diminished but functional,” Hannibal mused, “and easier to control.”

“Right. If I don’t turn up for my subsistence appointments, or show up having already fed elsewhere, there are consequences.”

“What does a vampire have to fear from mere human consequences?”

“Plenty. My Keepers have become creative in their methods of control.”

“Fascinating,” Hannibal said. “The Bureau has made a lion into a housecat.”

Hannibal sat quietly for several moments, savouring the secrets that had just been revealed and no doubt already planning ways to twist them to his own ends. A short while later, he got up from his chair and made for the top right-hand drawer of his desk, producing a small gilt hand-mirror from within.

Will huffed a laugh. “If you’re hoping to get some proof with that mirror, it won’t work. Modern mirrors are backed with aluminium. They reflect my image just fine.”

“A good job then that this mirror is very old, and backed with silver,” Hannibal said, coming to a stop by the arm of Will’s chair.

“Of course you have something like that just kicking around in your desk drawers,” Will sighed, rolling his eyes. At least Hannibal wasn’t demanding that Will extend his fangs and hiss. “Give it here then.”

Instead of passing the mirror to Will, Hannibal kept his grip on the handle and leaned down to circle his arm around the back of Will’s chair, a scant breath from pressing against his shoulders. He raised the mirror before their faces, and Will watched as Hannibal’s solitary reflection smiled slow and wide.

“Outstanding,” Hannibal said, as he remained there, looking.

It was difficult to tell how much time passed after that; possibly minutes, maybe hours, but to Will it was just more fleeting seconds in the endless stretch of his already impossibly long life. Hannibal appeared transfixed, tilting the mirror this way and that, letting his gaze shift slowly between the glass and Will’s steady, unblinking face. Fascinated by what he couldn’t see. 

Having Hannibal’s body so close to his own made Will’s teeth ache. He could smell the skin, the meat that sat beneath it, and the blood that snaked through it. He knew that, were he to turn his head and bite right now, Hannibal would taste sublime.

Will shifted in his chair and pushed the mirror away from his face. “I’m not a specimen, Doctor. Sit down.”

If Will’s brusque instruction gave Hannibal pause or offence he showed no sign of it, but instead of sitting he went to replace the mirror and then remained there by the desk, fingers curled against the smooth wood.

“You mentioned a need-to-know basis,” Hannibal said. “Do I need to know? Why isn’t your handler conducting this meeting?”

“You don’t need to know. I could get the therapeutic benefits that I need from you without revealing what I am. That’s what I was ordered to do when they signed off on my coming here.”

“But you’re flouting the rules and telling me anyway.”

“Yes.”

Hannibal stood silently for a long moment, considering. “Am I in any danger, Will?” he asked, not sounding the least bit frightened.

“More than you were yesterday. Less than you might be tomorrow. A great deal depends on what you choose to do with this information.”

“Do I have a choice?”

Will rose from his chair and buttoned his jacket. “Not really. Goodnight, Doctor Lecter.”

Outside, the streetlights had just begun to flicker to life, picking out piles of snow and slushy puddles with a sodium-yellow glow. A woman walking down the other side of the street was bundled up in scarf and gloves, so Will drew his thin coat around himself accordingly and hunched his shoulders against what he assumed must be an unpleasant chill. 

He had one leg and most of an arm inside his car when his phone started buzzing in his pocket. On the other end of the line, Jack’s voice was fuzzy and impatient.

“How did it go? Did you hook him?”

“He’s interested. I don’t think it’ll take very long. But, Jack--”

“Good. Don’t dawdle, Miriam wants to see you when you get back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for more vamp shenanigans next saturday ;)
> 
> ~~~
> 
> while i'm not really active there anymore, i am unfortunately still on [tumblr](http://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/) \- [here is a post for this fic](http://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/183648014299/playing-god-chapter-1) if you'd be so kind as to reblog and get the word out!
> 
> i am more active now on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch) \- [here's a tweet for the fic](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1109421842681528321), if you fancy giving it a retweet.
> 
> i'm also on [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/zacharybosch) \- i will make a fic post on there later.


	2. Chapter 2

Will hadn’t been quite prepared for how it would feel to reveal himself to someone outside of the FBI. When was the last time he’d revealed himself? Over a hundred years ago at the very least; he’d handed himself over to federal agents in a fit of suicidal righteousness shortly after the Bureau was established in 1908, fully expecting a swift execution and instead finding himself chained up in a basement cell for twenty years while they figured out what to do with him.

He hadn’t been expecting Hannibal to leap from his chair and invoke the name of Christ against him, but nor had he been expecting the calm, slow-blinking acceptance. A raised eyebrow, perhaps, or a brief slackening of the mouth. In all his long years, Will had never met anyone so infuriatingly placid.

He said as much to Miriam, and she smiled knowingly. He’d been familiar with her, in a rather vague sense, ever since she’d first begun her training at the Academy. And then he’d seen her, afterwards, shut up in the witness protection unit, trying to use an arm that was no longer there. Will had seen many people go through many horrific things over the course of his life, and none of them had been so resilient to those horrors as Miriam. When the opportunity to become Will’s handler arose, she had been damn near ready to fight people for it. 

“Makes you want to kick him in the balls just to see if he’ll even wince, right?” Miriam said. “Not that we don’t have reason enough to kick him already.”

“I don’t understand how you can be so blasé about him.”

“Well I know everything is terribly dramatic and overwrought for _your_ kind--”

“Oh god, don’t--”

“--but that’s just not me. He’s already got two years of my life. I’m not giving him any more. I’ve got better things to do.”

“Looking after a middle-aged vampire is a better thing to do?”

“Well I’m getting paid for it, so yeah, it is,” said Miriam. “Look, deep emotional turmoil aside, how was it physically? Did you feel anything? Any... twinge that might turn into a problem later on?”

Will closed his eyes and thought of Hannibal, the sandalwood scent of clothing that contained so much hot skin and blood beneath it. He felt a twinge, true, but he was constantly getting these ‘twinges’ in varying degrees from every person who saw fit to stand within a three-foot radius of him, so it was nothing new. He was very well-trained in denying that which called to him.

“No,” Will said. “No twinges. I’m fine.”

***

On a desolate and windy beach in Virginia, Will watched as a decaying totem pole of bodies was carefully catalogued and photographed.

His first thought was that he hadn’t seen any kind of human monument like this in a very long time, and this one particularly was quite impressive in its ambitiousness. His second thought was that it might be useful to say as much to Hannibal; it might make him jealous and provoke him to a misstep.

His third thought was that he should probably make a few shocked or appalled noises, like the other people attending the scene. There was a certain amount of nonchalance he could get away with, and which was indeed expected of him as an employee of the FBI, but a totem pole of bodies was apparently one of those things that you shouldn’t have become used to, and so Will turned away and shook his head as if to try and dislodge the image from his mind. One of the crime scene techs caught his eye and grimaced in solidarity. Just two humans together, doing the appropriate emotions.

The case quickly became boring after the initial excitement of the totem pole, although Will was faintly amused to discover that their killer had unwittingly murdered his own son. It reminded Will of a man he had known at some point in the nineteenth century - perhaps 1820 if he had to guess, or thereabouts - who had also mistakenly murdered his son. That man had in turn reminded Will of a similar man before him, and he of yet another man, on and on, back through the years. Same hubris, same ruin, same patterns cropping up again and again.

Will discussed the case with Hannibal at their next appointment anyway, careful to dress it up as more personally intriguing than it really was, but Hannibal seemed unmoved. Clearly it took more than that to make his jealousy spike, if he even entertained such an emotion as jealousy in the first place. Hannibal’s interest these days seemed to lie far more in the nature of Will himself than in the nature of Will’s reactions to the horrors he bore witness to. He’d made a valiant attempt to be light with his questioning in the intervening weeks since Will had outed himself, but their therapy appointments now frequently ended with what was essentially a vampire Q & A session.

“Do you eat?” Hannibal asked abruptly. “Besides blood.”

Will got up and stretched. The incessant questions had rankled at first, no matter how cool Hannibal tried to play it, but annoyance and feeling like a spectacle quickly gave way to a comfortable sort of indifference. And it wasn’t like Will ever had much else to do with his evenings; his subsistence appointments at Quantico were always scheduled late at night, and it was nice to be able to talk casually with someone about these things that no-one else wanted, or was allowed, to hear. 

He wandered over to the window and peered out into the gathering dusk. “Sometimes. When I want to, or when not eating would seem suspicious. There’s no nutritional value in it for me, so it’s a largely pointless exercise.”

“And here I was hoping that you’d declined all my dinner invitations for purely physiological reasons.”

“I try to avoid close personal situations as much as possible. It’s, ah, easy to get bitey, you know.”

“I can imagine. But would this now not count as a close personal situation?”

“You’re my therapist. It’s different.”

“Am I, and is it? I’ve found that we both seem to have some trouble drawing the line between the professional and the personal, when it comes to each other.” Hannibal glanced briefly down at his watch. “Our appointment ended thirty minutes ago. Both of us were fully aware of that, and yet neither of us made an attempt to close the discussion. Why is that?”

Will turned away from the window and met Hannibal’s eyes across the room. “You tell me.”

“My reasons are entirely selfish. I would keep you here to talk with me indefinitely, if I thought you would let me get away with it.”

“That sounds awfully possessive, Doctor.”

Hannibal gave a gentle shrug. “It’s all I can say, it being the truth. I’m sure you’ve had similar sentiment directed towards you before.”

“Not for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Are you asking me how old I am?” Will said, and it came out sounding far more flirtatious than he’d intended, but maybe that wasn’t so much of a problem. “Rude, Doctor Lecter.”

Hannibal picked up on it, of course, and shaded his reply with the same coy tone. “Are you willing to tell me?”

Will had lived to twenty eight in human years, with an extra six hundred and seventy three vampire years on top, but that wasn’t really any of Hannibal’s business. “Maybe another time. I should go. I have a date with a bag of blood.”

***

Will’s subsistence appointments were grim affairs. His Keepers still believed that he was at his most dangerous when ingesting blood, so they strapped Will to a modified dentist’s chair and fed him the blood through a tube taped in place over his mouth. No opportunity to lick his lips and savour the taste, no chance for a stray drop to land on his skin and let him remember how it felt to be covered in it.

The blood was administered by feeding technicians, trained only in the processes of applying and removing the tube; taking measurements and readings before, during, and after; and setting up four separate cameras to record the whole appointment. They were not told what the measurements were for, or what happened to the videos. They were not permitted to speak to Will beyond a short list of approved instructions.

It had been humiliating at first and Will had thought the whole ritual to be needlessly cruel, but over time the feeling faded along with everything else, and now these subsistence appointments were just one more low buzz in the background noise of his life.

When Miriam started in her post as his handler, she took it upon herself to meet with Will on Friday evenings to go over his subsistence reports for the previous week. It gave Will a sense of involvement in his “ongoing care,” or so the official line went, however more often than not the meetings consisted of five minutes on the reports and forty minutes exchanging mildly-interesting office gossip. It was the closest thing Will had to a normal friendship with a normal human being.

Miriam downed half of her mug of cold coffee and grimaced. “Hmn. All looks more or less okay. Starting temp was a little higher than usual today but still within the allowed range. A little hot and bothered, were you?”

“Well I saw them bringing in a bag of B-neg and I just couldn’t help myself,” Will dead-panned. “What’s new?”

“Bev had a couple of days in the lab this week. Just a few hours.”

“How is she?”

“Impatient to be out of the secure unit and getting on with the rest of her life. You know she’s in the same suite they put me in? We’re calling it the Hannibal Lecter Trauma Centre.” Miriam eyed Will over the top of her mug. “Maybe they’ll have to put you in there eventually. Or is the noose tightening already?”

Will shifted about in his seat and thumbed at a non-existent crease in his trousers. “Not exactly. Plan’s shifting a bit.”

“I knew this was a bad idea. He’s getting to you, isn’t he?”

“No,” Will lied. “I just… I think it needs a little more delicacy than what we originally planned for. He’s not a giddy teenager, Miriam, I can’t just pop my fangs out and expect him to immediately fall at my feet.” 

“Has he said _anything_ yet?”

Will levelled his own flat look at her. “What do you think? He’s operated undetected for years. Don’t hold your breath for a result any time soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/zacharybosch) (when i remember, trying to be better with that), and very sparingly and grudgingly on [tumblr](https://zacharybosch.tumblr.com)!
> 
> a tweet for this chapter is [here](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1112103630524637189), and a tumblr post is [here](http://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/183826135879/playing-god-chapter-2), if you would like to give either/both a retweet/reblog :)


	3. Chapter 3

It had barely been therapy to begin with, but to continue to refer to their meetings as therapy now was laughable. They didn’t even bother with the ritual of the armchairs anymore; Will had free rein of the office, and Hannibal frequently retreated to his drawing desk by the fireplace, to sip brandy or just watch Will roam. It was a strange thing to watch Will move through the world; Hannibal couldn’t help but wonder if Will even really saw anything clearly any more, or if every object, every new face, was just another rushing blur in the unending stream of his life. Everything must seem so impermanent to him, every towering cathedral just a house of cards waiting for the stiff breeze that would knock it over, while Will remained perfectly cast in amber, unmoving and unchanging through the centuries. 

He wondered again just how old Will was, but asked instead, “Does your hair grow?” 

“Not like yours does. But yes, it can grow.”

“Can?”

“I have to make an active effort to grow it, otherwise it’ll just stay as it is. At full strength I could grow my hair down to my waist within a minute or two.”

Will was completely unsurprised when the next words out of Hannibal’s mouth were, “Would you show me?”

The hair-growing thing was such a cheap trick. As superpowers went it was almost entirely useless, and only served to make Will feel like a performing animal. “I’d rather not. Once it’s done, I can’t un-grow it. I’d have to go get it cut. I don’t like going to get it cut.”

“I could cut it for you,” Hannibal said. “If I do a poor job, you can always grow the uneven parts until everything matches.”

“You’ve never done a poor job of anything in your life. You just want an excuse to touch me. See if I’m cold.”

Hannibal’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Maybe so.”

If Will was being perfectly honest with himself, his hair was more than a little dull and scraggly, and he was about fifty years overdue for some new, healthier-looking growth. Hannibal would in all likeliness do a good job at cutting it, and Will would rather sit there and answer Hannibal’s questions about his alimentary canal than go to a barber shop and make small talk about the weather.

“Okay,” Will sighed, dragging out the word out far longer than necessary. “You want to do it now?”

“Perhaps after dinner, if you’ll join me?”

Will rolled his eyes. “So that’s why you offered to play barber. I’ll come, but I’m not promising to eat.”

***

Will didn’t end up eating, but he enjoyed watching Hannibal do so; he took his time cherishing every last morsel that went into his mouth, and he thrived off of his food in a way that Will hadn’t been permitted to for decades. 

It was a performance. Not through use of the elaborate place settings or the ostrich-feather centrepiece, or even the careful architecture of the meal’s various components, but rather the consumption of the food itself made Will feel as though he were at a peep show, gazing in on something illicit. He was sure that Hannibal didn’t look like this when eating in the company of anyone else. Or maybe he did, but no-one else understood what it was that they were seeing.

Either way, by the time dinner was finished Will was more than ready to just make some excuse and leave, having been far more affected by Hannibal’s little display than he’d anticipated, but Hannibal swooped in with a hand at the small of Will’s back and guided him through to the living room. 

There was a harpsichord, because of course there was, and a lot of pieces of art that hit various levels of unsettling. It wasn’t a comfortable-looking room by any means, with its cold marble floor and abundance of animal skulls, but it was very Hannibal. 

Will would’ve preferred to just stay in the dining room with the solid barrier of the table between them, but he could see why Hannibal had brought him in here: just as the dining room was Hannibal’s performance space, carefully arranged to highlight and enhance exactly what he wanted to show, this space was to be Will’s. No doubt Hannibal hoped that Will would stand in front of the fireplace, cut a striking figure outlined with a golden glow, and demonstrate the wonders of his vampire physiology.

The reality would be underwhelming, but it couldn’t be helped. Will just needed to give Hannibal a little bit more of what he wanted, and then soon enough this would all be over.

Hannibal stood expectantly in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back, waiting for his show. Will rubbed a hand over his eyes and sighed. “Okay. I need to sit down for this. It takes a bit of effort.”

He arranged himself on one of Hannibal’s ridiculous armchairs that had hooves instead of legs, and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. For several minutes, nothing happened, but eventually his curls began to thread between his fingers, creeping over the backs of his hands and falling down around his wrists. Will was breathing heavily, which was alarming largely because he didn’t normally breathe at all. Pinpricks of sweat started forming on his skin, and when his hands started to shake Hannibal said, “Stop.”

Will’s hair hung to his shoulders, new growth lush and glossy in the firelight. He slumped back against the chair, wiping at his damp forehead.

“Sorry. It’s been a while. I didn’t think it would be this difficult or… sweaty.”

Hannibal was rapt, unable to take his eyes off the curls that now tumbled around Will’s collarbone. “Please don’t apologise, Will. That was a singularly extraordinary thing to witness. I admit, I’m somewhat reluctant now to cut your hair. I didn’t realise it would be so beautiful.”

“Please shut up. Can I have a glass of water?”

“Of course. Forgive me.”

Magic still had a place in Hannibal’s world, between the pages of books or in the brushstrokes of paintings, but magic in a practical sense had long since died a death along with so many other things in the snows of his childhood. He had witnessed magic anew, however, in the strands of Will’s hair that curled gold in the firelight. To think that such things existed, and that he was one of the few people who was privileged enough to have knowledge of it, was a wonder and a pleasure unlike anything else he could recall. 

As he filled a glass with mineral water from a jug in his fridge, Hannibal contemplated this new idea of magic and all that Will had shown him of it. Some things mapped to what he already knew of traditional vampire folklore, while others were wholly new to him; the hair-growing, for one, was entirely unexpected and utterly delightful.

He tried to imagine himself as a vampire, and found the idea to be pleasantly unsettling. Would he be as powerful as Will? Or would Will always have command over him, being his sire -- if such things even existed? Perhaps vampires couldn’t be made, only born. It was one subject that Will had never broached.

Returning to the living room, Hannibal had to stop in the doorway and admire the image before him. He wasn’t immune to pop culture and knew the classic image of the vampire that had grown up on movie screens and in the pages of well-thumbed novels; the flowing hair, the frock coats, the propensity for lounging; skin like silk and mouth like velvet and eyes like ice.

It was all too easy to look at Will and see it, especially with his hair as it was now. He was preternaturally still, staring into the fire with cold, unblinking eyes, the planes of his face painted gold in the firelight. Flesh made marble and sat in quiet repose for centuries.

Hannibal placed the glass of water on a side table, and lowered himself gently into the chair next to Will. The silence and stillness that permeated the room was unlike anything Hannibal had ever felt; not just the absence of obvious sound or movement, it was as though Will’s presence actively smothered even the smallest sounds and motions of the crackling fire, the ticking clock. As if Will was a black hole, swallowing everything inside himself until all that was left was nothing at all.

Long minutes stretched between them, until suddenly Will ran a hand through his newly-grown hair and reached for the glass of water. Hannibal found the change startling, like a bright light suddenly being switched on in a dark room; the fire was crackling again, the clock was ticking, and life was marching on outside these four walls just as it always had. How could no-one else guess that Will was something entirely other? The very feel of his presence was alien, like a crinkling in the fabric of reality.

But perhaps the same thing that protected Hannibal also protected Will, allowing them both to move through the world unseen by the eyes of normal people. They were of a kind, two beasts alike in appetite and attitude, and such things had to be carefully guarded.

“How much of your life do you dedicate to maintaining cover?” Hannibal asked, voice quiet in the room that still held the lingering echo of Will’s profound silence. “Your clothes, mannerisms, the place you live… What parts are you, and what parts are the mask?”

“It’s difficult to know. I’ve hidden for so long, in one form or another. Easy to forget some parts along the way.”

“That which protects us also consumes us.”

“Something like that. What do you need protecting from?”

“You, maybe,” Hannibal said, smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tune in next saturday to see if they can stop their weird mating dance long enough actually do that haircut.......!
> 
> the fic is on pillowfort [here](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/577365), tumblr [here](http://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/183983606504/playing-god-chapter-3), and on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1114479524455038976) \- if you're enjoying it then i'd really appreciate a reblog/retweet!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE thanks to [theseavoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices) for the beautiful illustration she made for this chapter!

When Will finally returned home, it was past two in the morning. This wasn’t normally a problem as being tired and falling asleep were, like most human functions, entirely optional activities for Will. He would sometimes sleep just to pass the time or check out from existence for a while, or to give an authentic impression of just-awoken grogginess if he was expecting a visitor the next morning.

But on this occasion, Will did have a genuine feeling of exhaustion that he was unable to shake off. Growing his hair had certainly taken it out of him, but the most taxing part of the evening had been afterward, when Hannibal played barber in his marble monstrosity of a bathroom.

The knowledge of Hannibal’s odd affection for him had always been a little disturbing, but Will had managed to acclimatise to its various forms without too much trouble. Having Hannibal perform such an intimate service, however, was something that Will felt he would never get used to; it was all hands on necks and fingers in hair, and Will hadn’t realised just how touch-starved he was until he found himself leaning into the cradle of Hannibal’s palms.

It had always been too much to hope that Hannibal would just leave it as a simple haircut. He’d washed Will’s hair over the sink, prepped it with all manner of oils and sprays, and even performed a half-hour scalp massage. The effort it had taken Will not to just leap out of his chair and start rubbing himself all over Hannibal was phenomenal. He was so _warm_. 

There had been a truly humiliating moment where Hannibal had dragged a comb firmly over Will’s scalp and through the damp ends of his hair, and it had felt so good that Will’s fangs extended all the way out before he realised what was happening.

“Does that always happen?” Hannibal had asked, combing through another section of Will’s hair, eyes alight with pleasure. “I had no idea you held me in such high regard.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Will gritted out. “It’s an involuntary reaction. They’ll tuck themselves away again… in a minute…” Hannibal hand sunk his fingers back into Will’s hair and against his scalp again, applying pressure with delicious expertise and making Will gasp for breath for the second time that evening. 

“If they’re out,” Hannibal murmured, suddenly very close to Will’s ear, “you might as well put them to good use.”

For a few dangerous seconds, Will had let his head loll to the side, parted lips and razor-sharp teeth just a breath away from giving Hannibal what he wanted. The moment hung between them, syrup-thick, lethal.

Then Will had come back to himself, clamped his mouth shut, and remained silent and still until the haircut was finished.

Letting Hannibal cut his hair had felt like a very bad choice at the time, but as Will shook out his bedsheets to dislodge the light coating of dust, he reflected that maybe it wasn’t such a bad choice after all. It had done more to reel Hannibal in than any number of careful ‘therapy’ sessions had, even getting him to the point of suggesting that Will bite him. Of course, it also put Will on a very slippery slope, but if he could get Hannibal to admit what he was sooner rather than later, then the slope might not matter. As soon as Hannibal was out of the picture, Will would be able to pull himself back up onto an even keel.

As false hopes went, it was a good one, and Will fell quickly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

***

The next day, Jack ambushed Will in the underground parking garage after his evening subsistence appointment.

“Nice haircut,” he said, leaning against Will’s car door. “Hannibal have anything to do with that?”

“What? No.” Will was faintly surprised at the lie even as it rolled off his tongue, and ran a hand self-consciously over the back of his neck. “It just… needed cutting. What do you want?”

“I want you to talk to me.”

“About what?”

“You know what. You said it wouldn’t take long. That was almost two months ago. What’s happening?”

Will groped around for an answer. What was happening? He’d fully intended to go through with Jack’s plan as initially laid out: reveal himself to Hannibal, forge a connection, and make Hannibal want to reveal himself in turn. It was true that he’d thought it wouldn’t take long. But both Jack and Will himself had made the fatal mistake of assuming that Will was just a man like any other, and that temptation for him was just a matter of willpower, and not a full-body, bone-deep, inexorable pull.

Somewhere along the way, Will had stopped trying to actively resist. He was much further down that slippery slope than he’d let himself believe.

“Nothing!” Will said, too loud. “Nothing’s happening. He’s not giving me anything. He just keeps talking about the things he wants me to do.”

“Has he asked you to do anything illegal?”

 _No, just to bite him and drink from him and willingly smash my self-control into tiny little pieces_ , Will didn’t say. “Nothing illegal. Plenty that my Keepers wouldn’t approve of.”

“Forget about them. You need to do whatever is necessary.” Will made to protest, but Jack held up a hand. “Do I have to remind you what he did to Miriam?”

“I know what he did to Miriam! I see it every day!”

“ _Then why aren’t you trying to draw him out?_ ” Jack bellowed, his voice echoing hollowly around the concrete pillars.

“I am,” Will said weakly.

“No, you’re not. If you were trying, we’d have results by now.” Jack drew a hand over his face and sighed. He looked exhausted. “You have hundreds of years of experience behind you. If you were trying, you would’ve had him wrapped around your finger within days. All you’d have to do is ask him where the smoking gun is, and he’d place it in your hands.” Will looked away guiltily. Jack was uncomfortably close to the truth. “Don’t let him drag you down to your base nature. You’ve been living clean for years. You’re better than that.”

That phrase, _you’ve been living clean for years_ , was a favourite of Jack’s, and it made Will grind his teeth to dust. A well-intentioned, uncomfortable reminder that every day Will was choosing to let these people control him. “I know what I’m doing. I’d rather take my time than risk making a mistake and sending him into hiding.”

“The longer you take, the more chance he has to kill again. Don’t forget that,” Jack said, pushing away from Will’s car. “Have a good night, Will.”

Will remained fixated on Jack’s words for the entire drive home. It was an uncomfortable truth, but a truth nonetheless: he hadn’t been trying as hard as he could have. In the past, he’d had people signing over their life savings within minutes, declaring their undying love for him within hours, killing for him within days. Even Hannibal, for all his cunning and twisty side-stepping, would have a hard time resisting when Will was operating with his sharpest and most lethal state of mind. 

But why hadn’t Will been trying? To say that he was scared of falling off the wagon would only be half right. The fact of the matter was that he was simply enjoying Hannibal’s company. Against his better judgement, against everything he knew about what Hannibal had done, Will found himself falling far too easily into a friendship in which he felt like an equal; not a tool to be used, or a monster to be controlled, but just a man to be liked.

It was too tender a thing to look at directly, and Will knew that it wouldn’t, couldn’t last. Letting it drag out like this was madness. He was only going to end up hurting himself when the time eventually came to deliver Hannibal to the hands of justice.

Upon his arrival at home, Will found a neat little card in his mailbox, inviting him to an eating-optional dinner the following night. It was these small intimate gestures, hand-lettering his invitations and fetching him glasses of water, that would leave such huge holes in his life when they were gone. 

***

As a free vampire Will had generally been fairly neat when biting and feeding, but there were some occasions where, for various reasons, he’d had cause to go beyond the clean puncture of teeth and had ripped flesh from bone. Most of the time it had been due to a sudden and hasty getaway; it was not always so easy to cleanly detach oneself from one’s victim, and sometimes a small chunk of flesh remained in the mouth. The remaining few times had been purely for indulgence.

Every person had their own unique flavour, but each piece of meat was underlined by the same undeniably human taste. A taste that, once experienced, was difficult to ever truly forget, although as it had been many countless years since Will had last taken such a bite, the memory of it had become quite faded in his mind.

It all came flooding back, however, when he had his first mouthful of the dinner that Hannibal had finally persuaded him to eat. How could they all have been so blind? The Ripper was never taking surgical trophies. He was taking ingredients.

The meat said: _I know that you know_.

Hannibal must have figured out somehow that Will was on to him. Whether he knew of Jack’s tangled mess of a plot was still up for debate, but judging from the veritable eye-fucking Hannibal was giving him, it was clear: Hannibal knew that Will knew about him, and he was daring Will to admit it. It was an outrageously reckless power move, presenting Will with exactly the kind of evidence he needed to lock Hannibal up for life and trusting that Will just wouldn’t report it.

The meat said: _You know, and you’re willingly eating the evidence._

He could tell Jack. He could take the plate right now, and flee from the house straight to Quantico. He could send the meat to the lab for testing. He could present this hard, undeniable evidence and get Hannibal swiftly brought to justice. 

He could also take another bite of human steak and eye-fuck Hannibal right back.

The meat said: _You know, you’re eating the evidence, and you don’t want to stop._

It felt alarmingly good to be played in such a way. Will was so used to being the apex predator, able to out-think and out-manoeuvre at a moment’s notice, that to be thrown something so brazen, so shockingly outré as to make his mind stutter and stall, was a new and bizarre pleasure. 

With every bite, it became harder and harder for Will to keep his fangs from extending. The meat tasted so good, rare and bloody and everything he’d forgotten that he wanted. He knew what he must look like, shovelling great heaping piles of the stuff into his mouth and almost moaning with every slide of flesh over his tongue; he knew that Hannibal must be enjoying watching him as much as Will was enjoying eating.

Will looked up from his plate to see Hannibal across the table, food largely untouched. If Will didn’t know better, he could’ve thought that Hannibal himself was a vampire, so hungrily did he watch Will. It was intoxicating to be watched like that, not with fear or disgust as he had been watched so many times in the past, but with curiosity, desire, and shameless possessiveness.

And then there really was no hope left; Will’s fangs slid out with a curl of his lip and a quiet _snick_ , and Hannibal was immediately standing at his side, and he was raising a hand to Will’s face, and he was dragging two fingers slowly over Will’s needle-sharp teeth.

Will didn’t hear his fork clatter noisily against his plate, and he didn’t hear the deep, almost purring sound he made when Hannibal placed his thumb and ring finger against his jaw to hold his head in place. The fingers on his teeth remained there, rubbing slowly.

“How many people have you fed from, Will?”

Will tipped his head back just enough for Hannibal’s fingertips to slide off his teeth and land on his chin, trailing saliva. “Thousands.”

“How many have you drained?”

“Hundreds.”

“How many have you turned?”

“None.”

“Never found another worthy of the gift?”

“Never found anyone I wanted,” Will said, taking hold of Hannibal’s hand where it still rested against his jaw and using it to pull Hannibal down into his lap. “That may be changing.”

Hannibal looked almost coquettish, sitting in Will’s lap and murmuring, “Have you met someone new?”

“I met him a while ago. But I’m thinking of him differently.” Will dropped his gaze to Hannibal’s lips and meant it to be a light, fleeting thing, but found that he couldn’t look away. “I know some things about him now that I didn’t know back then.”

“Good things?”

“Interesting things. I’m sure there’s more that he’s not telling me. I can see he holds secrets caged behind his teeth.”

“Perhaps he’s never found anyone worthy of those secrets.”

“He knows plenty of worthy people. But no-one he _wants_.”

Kissing Hannibal felt utterly inevitable at that point, so that was exactly what Will did. Jack’s words ricocheted around inside his skull, _you need to do whatever’s necessary_ , and he almost wanted to laugh, sure that this wasn’t quite what Jack had had in mind.

Instead, Will threaded a hand into Hannibal’s hair and pulled his head back.

“Is it smart for you to be doing this? I might bite your tongue off.”

“As I might bite yours.”

“I know why I’d bite your tongue. Why would you bite mine?”

It was foolish to think that Hannibal would simply say, _Because I’m a cannibal, of course_ , but when he just smiled in response Will couldn’t help the rising tide of frustration. It wasn’t even about getting the confession; the meat on their plates was all the evidence that Will needed. But Will just wanted some of Hannibal’s secrets in return for the ones Will had given him; he was potentially fucking up the whole plan for Hannibal’s sake, and Hannibal couldn’t even extend the courtesy of the truth.

It was too much of a snarling, angry mess to think about, particularly when he was already feeling so uniquely compromised, so Will stopped thinking and carried on kissing. Hannibal’s mouth was hot and wet and still filled with the taste of bloody meat, and Will let himself become lost in it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh will, was that really a good idea????
> 
> here is the fic on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1117027202619596806), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/592362), and [tumblr](http://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/184153053004/playing-god-chapter-4). retweets/reblogs are much appreciated!
> 
> you can find theseavoices and her beautiful work on [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices), [twitter](https://twitter.com/TheSeaVoices), and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/TheSeaVoices) for uncensored art; as well as [tumblr](https://theseavoices.tumblr.com/), [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/theseavoices/), and [facebook](https://facebook.com/theseavoices)!


	5. Chapter 5

“You, uh… You got any more of that steak?” 

Will had not been able to stop thinking about the meal he’d shared with Hannibal, brooding over it late into the evening for the past several days. All reasonable people were in bed at such a late hour, but of course Hannibal picked up the phone when Will called. Hannibal was not _reasonable people_.

“I’m so sorry Will, but I believe we ate the last of it.” Will could hear the smile in Hannibal’s voice, the smug, satisfied curl of it. “But if you wanted to come round, I’m sure I could find something else for you to eat.”

“Isn’t it a little late?”

“Not for you.”

Hannibal’s ‘something else to eat’ turned out to be himself. Will should’ve seen it coming; in fact, he had seen it coming, the numerous other times throughout his life when people had tried to pull a similar stunt. But Hannibal seemed to have an uncanny ability to blind Will in a way no-one else had ever quite been able to.

It sounded so simple and easy when Hannibal said it. Just a quick bite, an innocent little taste. For a few seconds Will even allowed himself to believe it, before common sense came crashing back into his brain.

“I can’t. They’ll know.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Hannibal said, as if this were all just some amusing game.

“It’s not just that. I’ll be different. Warmer, brighter, stronger. I’ll look alive. They take measurements with every feeding. Next time I come in, they’ll see something’s different. They’ll know.”

Jack had, in fact, already dropped some very unsubtle hints that Will should bite Hannibal if he thought it would help ensnare him. But Jack didn’t know the full extent of Will’s rules around feeding, and why they were there in the first place. Like everything else surrounding Will, it was a need-to-know basis, and Will’s Keepers had decided that Jack didn’t need to know. They told Jack that there was to be no feeding under any circumstances, and assumed that would be enough, not counting on Jack masterminding a secret entrapment plan and deciding that the “no feeding” rule probably wasn’t that important.

But Will knew how important it was. It wasn’t the blood itself that was the problem; he drank pretty much every day and didn’t crave more than what he was given. What he craved was the heat of it pumping fresh from the source, a warm body pressed against his, and the choice to take one sip and be done or drain a person dry. That was what the no feeding rule was about: it wasn’t about feeding at all. It was about Will’s self-control, and ensuring he wouldn’t be in a situation where it would undoubtedly fail.

Hannibal was so willing, and he didn’t even realise what it was that he was really offering himself up for. Or perhaps he did, and that was the thrill of it, the thought that Will could drink him entirely.

“I could lose control,” Will said. “I could kill you.”

“I know.”

“It doesn’t frighten you?”

“No.”

“It should. It frightens me.”

“I’ve not yet heard a ‘no’, Will. Tell me no and I’ll not ask again.”

Will moved his mouth and found that the word wouldn’t come out. He was so ready to sink his teeth in, could feel the strain in his jaw as he fought to keep his fangs from extending. If they came out, it was all over.

Jack knew the dangers. Will had tried his best to explain why every single part of his plan was a bad idea, and Jack had listened carefully and then pushed forward with it anyway, convinced it was the only way to get results. He wanted a quick play and a neat end to the very un-neat situation he’d put Will in.

Hannibal wanted to draw Will more closely to him, and to experience the thrill of having death itself eating out of the palm of his hand. So to speak.

And what did Will want? Will just wanted to bite. 

Perhaps everyone could have what they wanted.

“Go sit on the sofa,” Will said, looking anywhere but at Hannibal’s gleeful face. “You need to be able to hide the bite mark, so before you even think about asking, your neck is completely out of the question. Take off your jacket.”

Hannibal obeyed without question, and Will sat down heavily next to him. He was really going to go through with it. He hadn’t had willing blood for… he didn’t want to think about how long it had been. “I’ll do it on your arm, inside the elbow. Just don’t roll your sleeves up too far for the next few weeks, okay?”

“Understood,” Hannibal said. He began to unfasten the cuff of his sleeve, but Will stopped him before he could reveal more than an inch of wrist.

“How attached are you to this shirt?”

“I would have little trouble obtaining a replacement.”

“Okay. Good. There needs to be as little skin-to-skin contact as possible, so I’m going to bite you through the shirt.”

“Is that really necessary, or is it due to your own personal hang-ups?”

Will levelled Hannibal with a withering look. “Stop talking about things you know nothing about. It’s for your own safety, and mine.”

With no further ceremony, Will took up Hannibal’s arm and bit down into the yielding flesh. Hannibal hissed and jerked his arm involuntarily, but Will just tightened his grip and sucked. He’d become so used to his clinical subsistence appointments, the tube pressed directly down his throat and the anaemic, joyless trickle of blood, that he’d forgotten how good it felt to have hot, rich, free-flowing blood flooding his mouth, salty and metallic and messy. 

The heat swept through Will’s body like fire over gasoline. He could feel his bones strengthening, his skin thickening, sparks racing across neurons and nerve-endings. The fabric of Hannibal’s shirt sleeve was becoming soaked, and it was in the way of the only thing that mattered in that moment, so Will tore it open. The first hungry press of his lips against Hannibal’s slick, blood-dark skin felt like biting into the heart of God himself. 

Will was vaguely aware of something at the very edge of his consciousness, an alarm or sudden movement or something else that didn’t matter to him at all. He began to move bodily over Hannibal, caging him in with arms and legs, biting deeper, sucking harder…

And then suddenly Will was on his back on the floor, head swimming and pinprick stars clouding his vision.

***

Will found Hannibal in the downstairs bathroom. He had replaced his ruined shirt with a clean sweater, and was carefully applying neat strips of tape to the edges of a bandage. The sink was splashed with pink.

“I should’ve taken you seriously,” Hannibal said, not looking up from his bandage.

“Yes, you should. I’m not going to apologise. I tried to warn you.”

“But I’m glad I disregarded your warnings. You were breathtaking.”

“That was nothing.”

“I can only imagine what kind of savagery you must be capable of. Such possibilities I never dared dream.”

“Maybe you won’t have to imagine. If I told you I was going to kill you, I don’t think you’d try and stop me.”

Hannibal looked positively starry-eyed, staring at Will in the mirror. “Never.”

“It’s easy to give yourself up for death. No consequences.” Will crowded into Hannibal’s personal space, pressed his chest into Hannibal’s shoulder and continued low into his ear, “You’d die for me, but would you let others die in your place?”

Hannibal said nothing, just watched Will’s reflection in the mirror as he pointedly let his gaze drop to the fine skin of Hannibal’s neck.

“What if I told you I was going to kill someone else, would you stand aside and let it happen? If I was to kill a friend, a colleague?”

“Yours, or mine?”

“Is the distinction important?” Will said, barely more than a whisper breathed into the shell of Hannibal’s ear.

“Perhaps.”

Will said nothing for a long moment. He’d known murderers, serial killers, too many violent people to mention; the common thread that ran through them all was the desire to be acknowledged and congratulated for their power and cunning. Dismissal was unbearable. Will had already decided that presenting the meat as evidence wasn’t viable, for a variety of flimsy reasons that he didn’t want to look at too closely, so in the absence of any other evidence, getting Hannibal to confess was his only option.

He stepped away abruptly and said, “You don’t even know what it is you’re saying. You have no idea.”

And there it was, the irritation flickering over his face, there and gone again. Hannibal wouldn’t be so stupid as to come out with it right now and say that actually, yes, he knows exactly what he’s talking about because he’s killed however many hundreds of people in a variety of fun and clever ways. But the desire to do so had undoubtedly crossed his mind, and that was good enough for now.

After that, it was almost too easy. The slight bruise to Hannibal’s ego left him wanting to prove something, and Will took full advantage. Blood-drunk as he was, even after only a small amount, Will let the vestiges of his human persona slip away as the wave of his vampire nature rose up to consume him.

It was a simple thing to stalk back over to Hannibal, to turn his body so his back pressed against the sink, to hold him hard and kiss him harder and murmur against his lips that there were so many things he could tell Hannibal, so many delights and horrors spanning his long life, but he didn’t give his stories out for free and wouldn’t Hannibal give him something in return? 

Hannibal could’ve said anything, up to and including a full, detailed confession, and Will wouldn’t have heard it. The mere act of asserting himself, of caging someone in and knowing that in that moment he held the entirety of their life in his hands, gave Will such a heady rush that all he could think about was the next move he needed to make in order to get Hannibal more pliant, more willing, more ready to offer himself up.

But he didn’t have to think about it very hard. If it were anyone else, Will would’ve called it a pathetic, desperate display; but on Hannibal, the act of sinking to his knees was so sweetly submissive, so uncomplicated in desire and intention, that Will couldn’t help but place his hands on Hannibal’s face, cradling his cheeks, stroking his lips.

 _I don’t even need to turn him, his teeth are sharp enough already_ , Will thought to himself, and then stopped. Had the thought of turning Hannibal already occurred to him? And why was he even entertaining the idea? But then Hannibal’s hands were on him, gripping him through the fabric of his trousers and tugging at his waistband, and Will couldn’t remember what he was thinking about, couldn’t remember why he was here, couldn’t remember the last time someone had done this for him.

Will put a hand on the back of Hannibal’s neck. Hannibal’s mouth was impossibly hot, and Will could feel it burning him even through the layers of fabric that still separated them. When Hannibal did eventually peel Will’s clothes away and applied his mouth directly, it felt just like it did when Will had put his mouth on Hannibal; that same sudden fiery rush, like being engulfed in a great wall of flame. And Will knew that the feeling would never let up: no matter how long Hannibal stayed down there on his knees, taking Will’s cock into his mouth, the sensation would never lessen. It was always going to be the absolute most, the very edge of what Will could handle, like his mind and body were constantly shattering into a thousand tiny pieces, over and over.

Will had been revered as a god a small handful of brief and brutal times throughout his life, but he had never truly _felt_ like a god until Hannibal was kneeling before him. It wasn’t about greed or control or power; fearful scrambling and sycophantic devotion had never done much to excite Will or curry his favour. It was Hannibal’s simple, lucid decision to bend before him, to anticipate what Will wanted and to deliver it perfectly, to honour him as one god bowing to another. 

It was a feeling that was shared between them. Will’s shattered, gasping pleasure stoked the fire in Hannibal, and spurred him on to open his mouth further, to take more of Will inside himself; he’d finally found someone to sit beside him at the top of the food chain, and now he was going to eat him. 

Hannibal let his teeth drag against Will’s cock, harder than any human would’ve enjoyed, but Will’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and he began to move, fucking into Hannibal’s mouth, meeting every downward swallow with an upward thrust. He was breathing again, heavy and ragged, and Hannibal thrilled to think that Will was breathing at all, but specifically breathing like _that_ , because of him.

“ _Fuck_ , Hannibal, fuck, I’m gonna--” Will pulled his cock from Hannibal’s mouth and jerked it roughly with his own hand. Hannibal remained where he was, mouth open and tongue dripping. He pressed his tongue against the shaft of Will’s cock and his rapidly moving fingers, then dragged it along the length in a hot, wet stripe. Will screwed his eyes shut and came, spilling himself like a baptism all over Hannibal’s lips and tongue and teeth.

They stayed there for a while, Hannibal panting on the floor with Will stood over him, grasping the sink for balance. Eventually, Will lowered himself until he was level with Hannibal, and slowly, purposefully, swiped two fingers through the come that was still splattered over Hannibal’s mouth.

“Will--” Hannibal began, but Will shoved his fingers into Hannibal’s mouth, and whatever he was about to say was forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *insert something witty about blowjobs and cannibals and trust* 
> 
> you can also find this fic on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1119548930696646657), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/606788), and [tumblr](http://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/184315487684/playing-god-chapter-5) \- retweets/reblogs are my lifeblood!


	6. Chapter 6

“You _what?!_ ”

“I did what was necessary! Like you should’ve been doing this whole time!”

“You have no idea what you’ve done, Jack. Those-- those rules were in place for a _reason!_ ” Will was too angry to sit, too angry to stand still, too angry to consider his own hypocrisy; he was raging at Jack for overturning rules that he had already broken. It had been two weeks and he could still taste Hannibal’s blood between his teeth. It made him want to cry.

“And now they’re removed for a reason. A damn good reason.” Jack caught Will’s agitated gaze and held it firmly. “A damn good reason that you seem to be losing sight of.”

Will collapsed into a chair and groaned, head in his hands. “I’ve not lost sight. I know why you did it. I know why you think it will help, and yeah, short-term, it probably will help. But it’ll help _you_ , not me. It will go very badly for me.”

“You have control of yourself, Will. You’ve been living clean for--”

“For years, yeah, I know. And that’s solely down to the tight fucking leash the Bureau keeps me on. Nothing good can happen without that leash, but you just went and cut right through it.”

“I’ve got your back. If you feel yourself slipping, come to me.”

Jack had evidently already made up his mind and thoroughly believed that if it came down to it, he could pull Will back from dark places. Will remained entirely unconvinced, but no longer had the heart to explain to Jack just how severely he was underestimating the forces that were at play. He’d already slipped further than Jack could ever hope to reach.

“Sure. Okay. Whatever you say.” Will gathered his distress back inside himself and got up to leave. “I’ve got to-- well, I suppose I don’t have subsistence appointments any more. I guess I’ll just go home.”

“Check in with Miriam on your way out. She’ll brief you on the finer details.”

The finer details turned out to be the complete abolition of the tube-feeding process, replaced instead with free access to a chiller cabinet filled with bags of blood, a microwave to heat them up in, and a new timetable of twice-weekly “well-being check-ups”. The paperwork that detailed the feeding process had always contained a line expressly forbidding feeding from a live donor under any circumstances. Now that line was nowhere to be seen.

Will stood in Miriam’s office, glowering under a stormcloud of impotent rage. “Why did you sign off on this?”

“The increased freedom will be good for you,” Miriam said, not looking up from her paperwork.

“No, letting me live in my own house is good for me. Letting me drink unchecked is--”

“Good. For. You,” Miriam interrupted, and this time she did look up, holding Will’s gaze hard with her own. “Do you think I don’t know you, Will Graham? Do you think I don’t see you? Sit down.”

There was little use in trying to argue with Miriam when she got that tone in her voice; in those moments it was clear to see why Jack had taken such a shine to her when she first joined the Academy. They were more alike than either probably cared to admit, immovable and enduring and sometimes stubborn to a fault. Will knew what Miriam was about, and wisely sat down and shut up.

“Jack is hell-bent on catching Hannibal by whatever means necessary. For two years, he thought I was dead, and he thought it was his actions that got me killed. I’m sure you can appreciate the kind of guilt that comes with that.”

“Somewhat, yeah.”

“And then the only reason I was found was because Hannibal wanted me to be found. Jack felt useless and humiliated. This whole _thing_ … It’s not even about the Ripper any more, it’s about Jack regaining that sense of control.”

“So you got rid of my safeguards just so Jack could feel better about himself?” Will asked, incredulous.

“No, I got rid of your safeguards because Jack is never going to feel like he’s in control again no matter how much he tries. He let the whole Ripper thing get too far under his skin, and with Bella gone it’s the only thing he has left. Even if he was able to successfully, legally arrest Hannibal and get him locked away, he wouldn’t feel satisfied. Hannibal is his white whale, and I am not going to stand aside and watch him destroy himself and half the department over someone who will be able to outwit him at every turn, even from behind bars. Far better that Hannibal is removed from the equation entirely.” Miriam paused and stared at Will for a long while before she delivered her coup de grâce. “I got rid of your safeguards so that he will be out of our lives for good. You’ll drink him dry, and you’ll use the strength from that to wipe all trace of Hannibal Lecter from Jack’s mind completely. And then you’ll wipe him from Bev. And you’ll wipe him from me.”

Will just sat and stared at Miriam for several long moments, blinking stupidly. It couldn’t be real.

Miriam’s next words were careful. “Jack is not the only one who would have difficulty in leaving Hannibal alone if he were to merely be incarcerated. I lived with the man for two years. He took great pains to conceal his identity from me, but I saw enough of what mattered. When I named Chilton… logically, according to everything I remembered, it made sense. But it never _felt_ right, you know? That immediate reaction to Chilton, the visceral panic, it was a response that had been carefully manufactured for me. As soon as it was no longer useful, it fell away to nothing. Hannibal has a… peculiar way of slithering into your brain and setting up home there. By the time you notice, you’re not even mad. If he was imprisoned, the temptation to visit would perhaps be greater than I could manage.”

“This is fucked, Miriam. This is so fucked. Of all people, _you_ …”

“I know. Hannibal manages to ensnare everyone with some different aspect. For Jack, it’s the sense of victory over him that will never come. For me, it’s the curiosity about him that will never be sated. Even Bev, even after what she saw, she’s found it difficult to reconcile the knowledge with the man she knew before. For you… I think it’s simply that he lets you be as you are. No one else treats you like he does, do they? You hate it, but you can’t help going back for more. We should be disgusted, burning with hate for this man who has taken so much, and yet here we are. I’m tired of him taking up space in my life. I don’t want to think about him anymore.”

“You said you lived with him. A minute ago, you didn’t say _when he was keeping me against my will_. You said you lived with him.”

Miriam spread her hand and shrugged, as if they were talking about a mundane inconvenience and not her kidnapping and maiming at the hands of a serial killer. “You see my point. Once he gets under the skin, there’s no digging him out.” She gave a humourless smile. “Better to cut the whole arm off before infection spreads.”

“What does any of this have to do with what’s good for me, anyway? You think I want to be your personal attack dog?”

“I think you want to leave here, and I’m setting you up for a way out.” Will made to argue, but Miriam carried on before he could get past the spluttering. “Don’t try and deny it, I don’t need to hear it. I’ve opened up the door, and you can choose if you want to go through it. The strength you gain from draining Hannibal should sustain you for long enough to get far away from here.” Miriam eyed him for several moments before delicately navigating her next sentences. “But I also realise that you have some internal conflicts about your condition, and Hannibal has exacerbated those. I… can arrange for your final death, if that’s what you want. Heroic, tragic, disgraced, however you want it to play out. Or you can just go along with Jack’s ridiculous plan and doom us all to a lifetime of hearing Hannibal whispering in our ears.”

Will felt flayed open. He could endure being a pawn for Jack; though they were friendly enough, Will had always just been there to do a job and he harboured few illusions about the nature of their relationship. But against his better judgement, he’d come to think of Miriam as a friend. When people tried to pull him in ten different ways, Miriam was there to protect him from the greedy grabbing hands. She’d been the first in his team of Keepers to treat him like a real person, and he’d responded to her straightforward kindness like a plant reaching towards a shard of sunlight.

That she had her own agenda shouldn’t have come as a surprise; Will had lived a hundred lives and in each one there had been people who got close to him only so they could use him for their own ends. But the pain of revelation never seemed to lessen, and he could feel it now, deep and aching, like a punch to the gut.

“I’m not asking you to act right now, “ Miriam said, seemingly unaware of the effect her words had had, “but don’t leave it too long. Jack will try to force your hand, and so will Hannibal. Don’t let them get the better of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh noooo, oh nooooooo, will what are you going to DOOOOO
> 
> only two more chapters to go after this, and i'm going on holiday next weekend so chapter 7 will be posted a day early on friday 3rd of may, and chapter 8 will be a day late on sunday 12th of may
> 
> see the fic on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1122159049007685634), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/620638), and [tumblr](https://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/184482137284/playing-god-chapter-6) \- every reblog/retweet helps :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a final round of gargantuan love and thanks to [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices) for the final illustration she created for this fic, featured in this chapter!

Sitting in his car in the parking garage, Will stared at the keys in his hand and tried to gather the momentum to place them into the ignition. Miriam’s revelations were eating him from the inside out, skin fraying and tearing at the seams. For a hundred years, all he’d known was captivity and control. It had been comforting in a way to have every minute of his life mapped out and tracked and curtailed by a dedicated team of people; they did all his thinking and all his worrying for him, and all Will had to do was sit back and allow it. 

The move from his rooms deep in Quantico’s underground to his own house in Wolf Trap had been difficult at first and Will had taken a long time to adjust. It had been one of the first things that Miriam orchestrated when she took her post as his handler. The official reasoning behind it was all fairly straightforward: it would stop Will from going stir-crazy down in the basement, while also cultivating his complicity and his trust by extending trust to him, which was better in the long run than the existing method of complicity forced through control.

Hannibal had helped with the move. He was already on the Bureau’s payroll as an outside consultant for profiling, but on the request of Jack Crawford, he provided counselling to help Will overcome what was presented as “agoraphobia”. Jack had been given a very sharp tool to put to use in the BAU, and was eager to have him in full working order as soon as possible.

Will wondered what on earth Miriam had used as the official reasoning for the removal of his feeding regulations. The house was a careful extension of the tether, not too much nor too little, tension held perfectly to give both the Bureau and Will what they needed. But _this_ , this was a sharp cut through the tether with a shove off the edge of a cliff for good measure. Not that the official reasoning even mattered much anymore; evidently Miriam was prepared to do and say whatever was necessary in order to serve her own plans.

And what had Hannibal’s plans been all this time? Absurd as it seemed, he appeared to be the only person involved in this mess with no ulterior motive, no twisting schemes and half-truths. If he’d ever concealed a truth, it was only through omission and not outright lies. He just wanted Will to be his. 

Will had been aware of the weight of Hannibal’s strange regard from the first time they’d met. It was Will’s first case as part of Jack’s team; eight missing girls and father who couldn’t let his daughter go, and Hannibal sat there in Jack’s office with fluorescent light bouncing off his cheekbones, listening to Jack repeating over and over how quickly he needed Will to be “fixed” so that they could get on with the investigation. Hannibal had looked at Will askew and hadn’t ever really stopped since, just waiting patiently for the moment when Will looked back.

Everything from that moment onwards felt so inevitable, and Will knew with sudden perfect clarity and unerring surety that things were not going to go Jack’s way, and they weren’t going to go Miriam’s way, and if he was being perfectly honest with himself they probably weren’t going to go entirely Hannibal’s way either. Things just needed to _go_ , and whoever ended up the winner would be for the fates to decide.

Neural pathways finally managed to connect long enough for Will to get the key in the ignition and start the car, and then, much to his dismay, his first thought for where to go wasn’t to his own house, but to Hannibal’s. It made sense, he supposed; although he couldn’t reveal the true nature of his problems back then, Hannibal had been able to provide a good deal of help to Will when he was trying to adjust to his new life outside of the confines of Quantico. Understandable then that Will wanted to run to Hannibal again now, to help him make sense of this new and frightening change in his life. Sickening that it was probably exactly what Jack was hoping would happen.

But not sickening enough to stop him. Will refused to think about it any further, and drove to Hannibal’s house.

***

On the doorstep, Will could feel a low-level panic brewing in his chest. What was his self-control like without the the threat of repercussions looming over him? Did it even exist at all? Was he going to bite Hannibal as soon as he laid eyes on him?

Hannibal opened his front door, and Will didn’t bite him, but before Hannibal could say a word in greeting Will did blurt out, “They got rid of my feeding regs. I don’t know what to do. They-- they cut me loose.”

“Well. You had better come in,” Hannibal said, ushering Will inside with a gentle hand on his shoulder and a curious glint in his eye. “Is it supply that you’re worried about? Are you capable of starving?”

“No, it’s-- I mean, I can starve, but I can’t die of it, the supply isn’t-- it’s not the issue. They gave me… hah! They gave me a fucking chiller cabinet full of the stuff! Like a grocery store! Can you believe? But the issue, the _issue_ is-- not the blood but, the, the--”

“The control?”

“Yes. No… not just the control. I’m-- fuck, I’ve been barely holding on for so long, skin of my teeth, you know? But-- god, can vampires have panic attacks? Why am I even asking you? But what gets me, what _really_ gets me, is the-- the _disregard_ , for my safety, for yours, for-- fucking everyone! And they don’t care, they don’t care! It’s always _for your own good this_ , _for your betterment that_ , _you’ve been living clean for years_ …” Will slumped heavily against the wall and slid down to the cold marble floor of the foyer. “But it means nothing. It’s all for their own ends and they’re just using me to play against each other. Plans within plans and none of them are going to fucking win.”

Hannibal crouched down until he was level with Will, and placed a firm hand on his arm. “Who is this ‘they’, Will? What’s happened?”

Will just groaned and crashed his head into his knees, willing the world and everyone in it to please just fuck off for five minutes of peace.

“Is there anything I can do to help? Tell me what you need.” 

“God, just say it how you mean it, Hannibal. Everyone else is just looking to get something out of me, why should you be any different? Go on.”

Hannibal’s grip on Will’s arm became possessive, and his eyes became covetous, and his smile became predatory. “Very well. Give me what I want, Will.”

“Spell it out.”

“I want you to stop fighting with yourself and bite me. Right here, on my neck. Drink until you’re sated. I want it, and you want it. Do it.”

“Fuck. _Fuck_.”

Hannibal shifted and unfolded his limbs where he was still crouched on the floor. He propped his arms behind his back, kicked his legs out and crossed his feet at the ankle, looking like he didn’t have the slightest care in the world. Like there wasn’t a touch-starved, panicky vampire positively vibrating next to him.

“Do it,” Hannibal said again, letting his head fall back, eyes closed and exposing the column of his throat. 

Will couldn’t have moved away even if he wanted to. The pull of Hannibal’s life was inexorable, and he pressed himself up against Hannibal’s body, curling in towards his warmth. He trailed his fingers over Hannibal’s neck, mapping out the paths of veins and arteries, the bumps and dips of skin and muscle. Fitting his hand against Hannibal’s jaw, he stroked a thumb gently down over the fluttering spot where he could already feel his teeth sinking in, and let his fangs extend on a shaky, breathy sigh. “Definitely want it on your neck?” Will asked.

“Yes.”

Will leaned in and dragged his lips over the spot he’d been stroking. “Are you sure?”

“That’s awfully teasing for someone who was so desperate mere seconds ago,” Hannibal said, and then gasped as he felt the gentle graze of razor-sharp teeth against skin.

“Mmm, comes with the territory,” Will breathed against his neck. “Like Jekyll and Hyde. The magic potion makes me into a different man. I don’t even have to drink it, just the anticipation, the proximity when I know I’m going to get it, is enough.”

“Not a different man,” Hannibal said, arms buckling beneath him as Will straddled his lap and used the full weight of his body to press Hannibal into the floor, “just the unfiltered version of who you’ve always been. Like the clouds breaking apart to reveal the cold magnificence of the moon.”

“Wax lyrical about it later, right now I just want to tear your--” Will couldn’t even bear to wait until the end of his own sentence. He bit savagely into Hannibal’s neck and immediately felt his whole body ignite with shakes and spasms and a flood of endorphins. He drank long and deeply, and with every mouthful he could feel his body coming alive. 

When he’d bitten Hannibal’s arm, it had been like a smattering of raindrops falling onto his tongue. Biting him now was like dunking his entire body into the ocean.

It wasn’t just the sudden quenching after so many interminable dry years that made Will feel primal and vital and like he was awake for the first time in a century, although it did play a big part; what had Will truly out of his mind with giddy pleasure and bloodlust was that Hannibal _wanted_ Will to do this to him. Even after the first time Will had bitten him, when Hannibal saw just how fine a line there was between Will’s sanity and savagery, he had still come back and asked for it again, bigger, harder, fatal.

Hannibal twitched beneath him, dazed and breathing shallowly. Will removed his mouth for a brief moment, just to let the blood spray against his skin a little before the pressure dropped too far and the jet became a trickle. Will had imagined how Hannibal might taste, on too many lonely nights with nothing to do but sit and stew over ifs and buts; he’d thought of the earthy scent of mushrooms, the sharp tang of salt and bone marrow, the clean cut of ginger. 

But Hannibal tasted like none of those things. He just tasted like blood. Rich, metallic, hot, delicious blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *insert slurpy chomping noises*
> 
> here's the fic on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1124370177842458624), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/632471), and [tumblr](https://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/184624754734/playing-god-chapter-7). i'm on holiday for the next week and flying home next saturday, so the final chapter will be posted on sunday 12th!
> 
> you can find theseavoices and her beautiful work on [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices), [twitter](https://twitter.com/TheSeaVoices), and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/TheSeaVoices) for uncensored art; as well as [tumblr](https://theseavoices.tumblr.com/), [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/theseavoices/), and [facebook](https://facebook.com/theseavoices)!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here it is, the final chapter! thank you all for coming on this journey with me, writing and posting this fic was very nerve-wracking and felt like completely new territory for me, so all your comments and kudos and general support have been much needed and greatly appreciated.
> 
> one final shout-out to [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices), whose artwork brought this fic to life and whose debt i am eternally in.
> 
> finally, if you'd like some end credits music please may i suggest [Hubris by Sevdaliza](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYXZoxltYuU)

Bleary-eyed, Jack snatched up the phone from its place on his nightstand. It had been a long time since the taunting Miriam phone calls, but when his phone started blaring at three in the morning, it was difficult not to let the dread creep in.

“Hello?”

“Jack, it’s uh… It’s me.”

“Will. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong. In fact, I think everything is right now. I got you what you wanted. But it, heh, it came at a price. I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

“Where are you? Are you with Lecter? Talk to me.”

“Am I _with_ him? Oh, it’s a bit soon to say, I should think. Give it about twenty-four to thirty-six hours and you can see what he has to say about it.”

“Will,” Jack ground out. “What. Is going. On.”

“Nothing, not now. It all kicked off earlier, Jack, and you missed the party. Well, it wasn’t really a party. You can’t use the word ‘party’ in a house like this. It was a… soirée? Is that a word he’d use? A gathering? An intimate dinner for two? Someone certainly got ate. And I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t me.”

Jack felt the pit of his stomach drop as sickening realisation dawned. “What have you done?”

“A few things you wanted me to do. A few things you didn’t.” Will sighed expansively. “I suppose I made a few bad choices. Don’t come looking, Jack. You’re not gonna find what you wanted.”

The line went dead, and Jack bolted from his bed.

It took him an hour to get to Hannibal’s house. Jack knew in his bones that he was too late, that he had been too late the moment Will had disconnected the call.

The front door to Hannibal’s house stood slightly ajar, a thin shaft of light spilling out onto the stone steps. Inside, there was a spray of blood across the marble floor of the foyer, more on the walls, and a dragging trail of it leading through to the dining room.

“Will!” Jack called, though he knew it was as useless as the gun in his hand. A chill breeze followed him as he made his way across the foyer and into the dining room, footsteps echoing with a startling loudness in the cavern of the house. The dining room looked remarkably the same as it always had, save for the dark trail of blood that swept the length of the room and continued into the kitchen. 

The trail ended at the wooden butcher’s block, which was so saturated with blood as to look almost black. A square of cloth that was very likely one of Hannibal’s pocket squares was on the floor, slowly becoming drenched.

The lights were all burning brightly, and in the oven a joint of meat was slowly turning tough and black.

And in the kitchen sink, an ear.

***

In the bowels of the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit, Jack stood in his office, agitated and impatient, waving a hand in Bev’s general direction. “I know what it says, I’ve read the damn thing ten times already. Just tell me, in your professional opinion: could they have survived?”

Bev screwed up her mouth and scanned the papers before her. She knew the answer already. “Will? Maybe. There was plenty of his blood at the scene. A human probably couldn’t survive it, but if what you’re telling me about him is true…”

“It is.”

“Then I guess it’s possible? I don’t know how,” Bev chewed on the next word before spitting it distastefully out of her mouth, “ _vampire_ physiology works.”

“And what about Lecter?”

“No way. There was almost _too_ much of his blood. No-one could survive that. Coupled with the ear, well. Who knows where the rest of his parts are, but I wouldn’t count on them all being joined together.” Bev dropped the report onto the desk with a too-hard thud and began to pace about the room. “I don’t get it though. If Will is a-- you know. If it’s all true, then shouldn’t he have drunk it all? Why leave so much good blood to go to waste?”

Jack grimaced. “It’s recently been brought to my attention that I know considerably less than I thought I did about what Will Graham should or shouldn’t have been doing.”

“You thought you could cover him. It’s not your fault that you believed in the best of him.”

“I chose to believe he was just like you or me, and that choice cost us our only chance at putting the Chesapeake Ripper behind bars. He got the easy way out. Death is too good for someone like that.” Jack sat down heavily in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. “Go home, Beverly. Hannibal Lecter is dead and you’re free to leave.”

***

The underground parking garage at Quantico was a sea of concrete as far as the eye could see, stained and cracked and always entirely mundane, until now. Walking from the elevator to Miriam’s car, Bev couldn’t help but think of all the times she’d come down here with Will, just two normal colleagues heading to their cars after a long day at the office. Had he been staring at her neck the whole time, waiting for the opportune moment to take her and bite her and leave her dead behind a pillar? And why did he even have a car in the first place? Couldn’t he turn into a bat and just… fly home?

Miriam was saying something and it was echoing off the walls and feeding back into Bev’s ears two, three, four times over. The secure unit she’d been living in for the past few months had always been so deathly quiet. Now every footstep sounded like a gunshot.

The first thing Bev did when she got into Miriam’s car was turn off the radio.

“You read my report, right?” Miriam asked, as she fired up the car and began the long drive home. Bev twisted her mouth around and said nothing. “I know you’re not officially allowed to, but I also know that Jack would’ve shown you anyway. What did you think?”

Bev sighed. She loved Miriam, she really did, but Miriam could never just let things lie for a while. Bev just wanted to go home and make her own food and sleep in her own bed and not think about anything for a few days. Or months. “I think it’s… unbelievable. I’m not sure if I mean that in a good way or not. How was this-- how was _he_ working with me all this time and I never knew what he was?”

“You know I would’ve told you if I could.”

“I know, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at-- I don’t know what I’m mad at. I liked Will. He was a bit weird, but it didn’t bother me. It was bad enough discovering that Hannibal just wanted to eat me. Now it turns out Will probably just wanted to eat me too? What am I meant to do with this?”

“I don’t think Will ever wanted to eat you. We did feed him regularly.”

“Please spare me the details. I hate the thought of him being free to roam and I hate the thought of him being held captive by you.” Bev sank down further into her seat and put a hand over her eyes. “I hate thinking at all right now.”

Miriam let the conversation drop, and focused silently on the pinprick tail lights blurring in the rain on the road ahead. Bev seemed to be dozing off in the passenger seat, but some minutes later she asked, “How much of Jack’s plan were you aware of? Were you in on it from the start?”

Miriam hesitated for a second before she answered. “I helped him develop it. And I was involved throughout.”

“Jesus.”

“I was going to make it work for us, you know. I had another plan, a better one. I was going to get us all a happy ending. Will was going to kill Hannibal, and then he was going to wipe him from our memories so we could get on with our fucking lives and not have to _think_ about him anymore.”

Bev stared across the car in horror. “He can do that?! Were you even going to ask me before you sent him to scramble my brains? No, of course you weren’t. This whole goddamn mess… You and Jack never could just leave well enough alone, could you? No wonder he took such a shine to you all those years ago. Two peas in a fucking pod.”

“Bev, please, I just want what’s best--”

“Well maybe I want my fucking trauma, Miriam! Shit, you’re as bad as they are. Can’t resist playing God.”

“You’re right, and I’m sorry. I just wanted a clean break for us, you know? I’ve felt Hannibal’s shadow at my back for too long. I didn’t want you feeling it too. We deserve more than that.”

“Well I’m pretty sure he’s dead now. So. I guess you got half of what you wanted,” Bev said, and when Miriam didn’t respond she looked at over at her, at Miriam’s grim profile and the heavy silence that was spilling every secret that she was trying to keep. “Oh just spit it out already. What aren’t you telling me?”

“I don’t think Hannibal is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp that's it, hope you enjoyed, thanks for coming along for the ride!! catch you all later!!!
> 
>  
> 
> .............except catch you all SOON IN A FEW WEEKS WHEN I START POSTING THE SEQUEL: **PLAYING DEAD**!! yes i am dumping a surprise sequel on you all :'D i didn't intend for this fic to be a two-parter when i first started writing it, but when i was getting near the end of Playing God i realised there was more stuff that i wanted to do, so, i did it :D
> 
> Playing Dead is all completely written, however i'll be taking a posting break for a few weeks so that i can finish up the edits, get the art sorted, and also just have a few weekends where i'm not worrying about posting lol
> 
> you can find this final chapter here on [twitter](https://twitter.com/zachary_bosch/status/1127542783978483712), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/650419), and [tumblr](https://zacharybosch.tumblr.com/post/184823675884/playing-god-chapter-8-final) :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Illustration for Playing God](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18209039) by [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/pseuds/TheSeaVoices)




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